@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@jbishop1001 wrote:I am wondering if FICO scores utilization per each individual account - OR if it's scored overall?
Does it lump your credit limits all together and divide it from your balances?
Example: I now have 3 accounts. $1700 of total credit, with $600 being used. 2 of those accounts are maxed. And one has $1100 of available credit.
Does the overall credit limit help with utiliztion when other accounts are maxed? Or does FICO score each account's utilization?
It does both: aggregate utilization, and individual tradeline utilization. There's even a third portion where it takes a ratio of the number of cards reporting a balance to the total number of revolving accounts.
Conventional wisdom (though this doesn't hold for everyone but it's close for me at any rate) is to have one card report <10% of it's limit and the rest $0, though in reality my breakpoints on individual card utilization seem to be a lot higher but it's an easy line to draw.
My recent score changes since the new FICO 08 model was adopted by myFico seem to show that two cards posting balances is "Prefered" by 08.
With posted balances consistantly in the low single digits(%), I now lose points if I only have one card showing a balance. My score just dropped to 820 from 833 when my second card balance went from $11 to $0. Previously it had gained those points when I let the second card post the small $11 balance.
The old 04 version (which I now only see once a month from my DCU account) penalizes me for having more than one card post a balance.
+1
Your last line, about the old '04 version is something that people looking for optimal utilization for a mortgage should take note of! 
Mortgage brokers don't use 08, they use 04!!
@Revelate wrote:
@jbishop1001 wrote:I am wondering if FICO scores utilization per each individual account - OR if it's scored overall?
Does it lump your credit limits all together and divide it from your balances?
Example: I now have 3 accounts. $1700 of total credit, with $600 being used. 2 of those accounts are maxed. And one has $1100 of available credit.
Does the overall credit limit help with utiliztion when other accounts are maxed? Or does FICO score each account's utilization?
It does both: aggregate utilization, and individual tradeline utilization. There's even a third portion where it takes a ratio of the number of cards reporting a balance to the total number of revolving accounts.
Conventional wisdom (though this doesn't hold for everyone but it's close for me at any rate) is to have one card report <10% of it's limit and the rest $0, though in reality my breakpoints on individual card utilization seem to be a lot higher but it's an easy line to draw.
It's interesting.. I also think that there is a magic number depending on one's profile where if more than 1 card reports there is also an optimal score range. (I say this because say you have about 7-8 reporting a balance.. I've had score decreases by 1 or 2 cards reporting as a 0 balance after having one previously.) Not to change or dispute any of the conventional recommendations, but just an odd observation I've made of my score alerts.
I'm still scratching my head trying to understand this distinction, and I'd like to add my personal observations: I have five cards with a total combined limit of $30,900 - half of which is on one card. Just 1% of my total limit would be $309, yet that would be over 10% of the individual limit on two of my cards. I noticed that if I only let one card report with 1-10% utlization for its respective inidivual limit, and that amount was less than 1% of my total combined limit, I suffered a sizeable ding to my score since that registered as 0% utilization. My general approach has been, if I'm going for optimal utilization, to make sure that the card I choose to have reporting has a high enough limit that I can keep under 10% individual as well as over 1% total.
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In my experience. Whenever I let a 2nd card post a balance even s minuscule amount I've Always seen a corresponding drop in score. This is 08 scoring.This happens with me as well according to the upgraded Scorewatch and presumably from the newer 3b monitoring though I haven't been tracking my scores much recently I can go back and do a historical analysis pretty easily.
Gained points going from 2->1 card (out of 9) reporting a balance, then lost the same amount when another reported.
I will say though that I did have a data point where I went from 8% to 44% utilization on that one card and the score didn't budge (still <10% of my aggregate) but I think the primary take away is that there's conventional wisdom which doesn't hold for every single individual. We know that people have variations in optimum balance amount based on their individual report, it's entirely possible that some data prefers 2 accounts with balance than one (I'm assuming you're not involving AU tradelines in this bobebob, AU discounting may be the source of the issue otherwise as a difference between FICO 8 and FICO 04)
The changes though are pretty small between 1 vs 2 cards reporting if you have call it 5+ credit cards regardless, and as such I think the base recommendation of only have 1 card reporting a balance is close enough to optimal that it's a legitimate recommendation... if someone wants to do better, then they can subscribe to a FICO monitoring service and figure out explicitly what the prettiest reported balances are for their individual report.
The main account I use is the account where I am an AU (Amex Costco). However, the tradeline showes up on my report and any amount showing on the statement comes up under my credit report as well.
It may be that when I called to request a CLI on the account and they took my information to make me partially responsible for the account that it became more of a joint account vs me being an AU.
What you may be stumbling over is the AU is being discounted from your scoring profile.
If you wish to test this, have the AU report zero, and the other card report, see if your score is the higher or lower of the two numbers. Then let some other card report see if that new score higher or lower. Unfortunately with an AU + 1 card reporting we can't state that 2 cards is better than 1 even for your profile under FICO 8, as if that AU is discounted, you are now at 0 tradelines with balance and we know conclusively that is a negative.
CLI request makes no difference to FICO's anti-AU abuse as I understand it: it may be on the credit report, just discounted from the algorithm... a very common occurrence under FICO 8 we've found.
@Revelate wrote:
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In my experience. Whenever I let a 2nd card post a balance even s minuscule amount I've Always seen a corresponding drop in score. This is 08 scoring.This happens with me as well according to the upgraded Scorewatch and presumably from the newer 3b monitoring though I haven't been tracking my scores much recently I can go back and do a historical analysis pretty easily.
Gained points going from 2->1 card (out of 9) reporting a balance, then lost the same amount when another reported.
I will say though that I did have a data point where I went from 8% to 44% utilization on that one card and the score didn't budge (still <10% of my aggregate) but I think the primary take away is that there's conventional wisdom which doesn't hold for every single individual. We know that people have variations in optimum balance amount based on their individual report, it's entirely possible that some data prefers 2 accounts with balance than one (I'm assuming you're not involving AU tradelines in this bobebob, AU discounting may be the source of the issue otherwise as a difference between FICO 8 and FICO 04)
The changes though are pretty small between 1 vs 2 cards reporting if you have call it 5+ credit cards regardless, and as such I think the base recommendation of only have 1 card reporting a balance is close enough to optimal that it's a legitimate recommendation... if someone wants to do better, then they can subscribe to a FICO monitoring service and figure out explicitly what the prettiest reported balances are for their individual report.
The main account I use is the account where I am an AU (Amex Costco). However, the tradeline showes up on my report and any amount showing on the statement comes up under my credit report as well.
It may be that when I called to request a CLI on the account and they took my information to make me partially responsible for the account that it became more of a joint account vs me being an AU.
What you may be stumbling over is the AU is being discounted from your scoring profile.
If you wish to test this, have the AU report zero, and the other card report, see if your score is the higher or lower of the two numbers. Then let some other card report see if that new score higher or lower. Unfortunately with an AU + 1 card reporting we can't state that 2 cards is better than 1 even for your profile under FICO 8, as if that AU is discounted, you are now at 0 tradelines with balance and we know conclusively that is a negative.
CLI request makes no difference to FICO's anti-AU abuse as I understand it: it may be on the credit report, just discounted from the algorithm... a very common occurrence under FICO 8 we've found.
If the 04 and 08 models treat AU accounts differently, then that may be what I'm seeing. I hadn't thought about that possible difference between the models. Maybe I'll get an AMEX in my own name and have them backdate it to the one I'm an AU on. Then all would go back to normal.
It makes it confusing because the AU account is still listed in the 08 reports I've pulled since the change along with the statement balances at the time.
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@bobebob wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
In my experience. Whenever I let a 2nd card post a balance even s minuscule amount I've Always seen a corresponding drop in score. This is 08 scoring.This happens with me as well according to the upgraded Scorewatch and presumably from the newer 3b monitoring though I haven't been tracking my scores much recently I can go back and do a historical analysis pretty easily.
Gained points going from 2->1 card (out of 9) reporting a balance, then lost the same amount when another reported.
I will say though that I did have a data point where I went from 8% to 44% utilization on that one card and the score didn't budge (still <10% of my aggregate) but I think the primary take away is that there's conventional wisdom which doesn't hold for every single individual. We know that people have variations in optimum balance amount based on their individual report, it's entirely possible that some data prefers 2 accounts with balance than one (I'm assuming you're not involving AU tradelines in this bobebob, AU discounting may be the source of the issue otherwise as a difference between FICO 8 and FICO 04)
The changes though are pretty small between 1 vs 2 cards reporting if you have call it 5+ credit cards regardless, and as such I think the base recommendation of only have 1 card reporting a balance is close enough to optimal that it's a legitimate recommendation... if someone wants to do better, then they can subscribe to a FICO monitoring service and figure out explicitly what the prettiest reported balances are for their individual report.
The main account I use is the account where I am an AU (Amex Costco). However, the tradeline showes up on my report and any amount showing on the statement comes up under my credit report as well.
It may be that when I called to request a CLI on the account and they took my information to make me partially responsible for the account that it became more of a joint account vs me being an AU.
What you may be stumbling over is the AU is being discounted from your scoring profile.
If you wish to test this, have the AU report zero, and the other card report, see if your score is the higher or lower of the two numbers. Then let some other card report see if that new score higher or lower. Unfortunately with an AU + 1 card reporting we can't state that 2 cards is better than 1 even for your profile under FICO 8, as if that AU is discounted, you are now at 0 tradelines with balance and we know conclusively that is a negative.
CLI request makes no difference to FICO's anti-AU abuse as I understand it: it may be on the credit report, just discounted from the algorithm... a very common occurrence under FICO 8 we've found.
If the 04 and 08 models treat AU accounts differently, then that may be what I'm seeing. I hadn't thought about that possible difference between the models. Maybe I'll get an AMEX in my own name and have them backdate it to the one I'm an AU on. Then all would go back to normal.
It makes it confusing because the AU account is still listed in the 08 reports I've pulled since the change along with the statement balances at the time.
When FICO 8 was originally released they didn't count AU's in the scoring algorithm at all because they were being abused; they backed off that after certain groups raised hell (rightfully) and developed some "anti-abuse" mechanism which discounts the tradeline for scoring purposes sort of like a tradeline under dispute.
Still listed on the report, not counted for one's FICO score.